April 27, 2009

So it seems airports are a good place to sit down and write blog entries.

Packed, unpacked, took a bus, a train, a plane, another bus, a tram (streetcar), another train, sweet-talked the officer because I lost the train ticket, sweet-talked security because my carry-on is, encore et toujours, overweight, sweet-talked that girl, just ‘cause she was cute.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months.

This flight though, wasn’t scheduled. The original plan was to drive from Brisbane to Sydney, down the Gold Coast, and then whatever else is North of Sydney. (good time to open Google Earth here). But having spent a day at one of the most famous Aussie beach, Surfers Paradise, I realized that, even though I had a great time (and took cool pictures; you gotta admit the surfer boy and the girl in the Aussie-flag bikini is a cool shot), I’m not much of a beach person.

And since beaches are pretty much what you’ll find between Brisbane and Sydney, I decided to visit a place I was originally going to skip. I looked into flights to Ayers Rock, but it was too expensive just to see a rock in the middle of nowhere. So I decided to fly, for $120, to Melbourne.

You have to adapt to the country you visit. Australia has some nice landscape, I’m sure there are some amazing spots to go hiking and all, but I just came back from venomous-snake-free New Zealand where the nature is a lot more beautiful (and is not going to kill you). So I decided to spend more time in the Aussie cities; Melbourne being the second biggest one. Many people I know really enjoyed their time there.

So that’s a bit of what I’m doing right now.

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I’d like to congratulate my classmates at Seneca, for whom the semester just ended. We’re part of the very first IDP batch and that’s something we should be proud of. Now it’s upon us to be successful and built a good reputation for Seneca’s IDP. I know you’re having a party to celebrate this, so please, someone, buy Ron a big beer to thank him for building, over the last 6 years, this program. Buy one for Ray as well, he’s been a big part of the whole thing too, and is now taking over as co-ordinator (thus sacrificing previous motorbike time to take care of IDP students).

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Also, thanks for telling me which New Zealand picture was your favourite. Everybody had a different one. So they’re either all great, or they all suck equally!

If you’re wondering which ones are my favourites, have a look at the South Pacific II gallery on my website. Some of them were not on the blog.

If you haven’t, click on the image of the surfer and his girlfriend to see a larger version. I thought it’d be so cheesy when I was about to shoot it, but then I caught a candid moment, and it turned out to be the best picture that day.

Adrien is really good at writing short bios. I mean, just look at how this one is going; pretty good so far. It's actually awesome and we haven't even talked about his photography yet. And at this point, why should we, let's just quit while we're ahead.